2 bodies recovered in Canada mall roof collapseELLIOT LAKE, Ontario (AP) — Officials recovered two bodies after dismantling a piece of a partially collapsed Ontario shopping mall on Wednesday and said they are confident no other victims are inside. The renewed rescue effort came after angry residents shouted down fears that the unstable structure made the work too risky to continue. Police Staff Insp. Bill Neadles of the Toronto-based Heavy Urban Search and Rescue team said both victims ha...

Syria violence escalates as US seeks turning pointBEIRUT (AP) — Gunmen attacked a pro-government TV station Wednesday near the Syrian capital, killing seven employees in the latest barrage of violence as world powers prepared for a high-level meeting that the U.S. hopes will be a turning point in the crisis. Invitations to Saturday’s gathering in Geneva were sent by special envoy Kofi Annan to the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — including Syrian allies Russia and China —...

Troubled Europe summit: Merkel vs everyone elsePARIS (AP) — Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel is the woman to watch — or fear, or confront — in Europe this week. The leaders of Italy, France and Spain are pressing their northern neighbor at a European Union summit starting Thursday to agree to share debts before markets push the eurozone any closer to collapse. The EU’s top officials and the International Monetary Fund have argued the same. Markets and investors, who felt burned in the pa...

Death toll, injuries mount from Mali rebel clashBAMAKO, Mali (AP) — The tenuous truce between two of the rebel groups controlling northern Mali was shattered on Wednesday, as the rebel faction bent on creating an Islamic state fought its way into the buildings used by a secular rebel group. The latter was forced to beat a retreat and one of their leaders was airlifted abroad after being shot in the leg. Resident Hamadada Toure said that he had cowered inside his home during the morning, whe...

Taliban video shows 17 beheaded Pakistani soldiersDERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) — The Taliban released a video Wednesday that they say shows the heads of 17 Pakistani soldiers captured in a cross-border raid from Afghanistan this week and beheaded. In violence Wednesday, a bomb in a railway station in Pakistan’s southwest killed at least five people, police said, and the leader of an anti-Taliban militia was killed in Peshawar in the northwest. The Pakistani Taliban’s bloody cross-border ra...

Egypt’s generals eye Turkish modelCAIRO (AP) — Now that Egypt has its first freely elected president, Egypt’s powerful generals appear headed toward copying the Turkish model from decades past — retaining overwhelming powers while allowing a civilian regime complete with the trappings of democracy to emerge. It is not the model that many in today’s Turkey boast about, but rather one dating back to the 1980s and 1990s when civilians ran Turkey’s day-to-day affairs under the wat...

Police: 19 sect members killed in Nigeria clashesDAMATURU, Nigeria (AP) — Multiple clashes between security forces and suspected members of a radical Islamist sect in Nigeria’s north have left four policemen, four civilians and 19 militants dead, authorities said Wednesday, as the feared sect continues to widen the scope of its attacks. Assailants torched two blocks of empty classrooms at the Federal Polytechnic Damaturu in the northeastern city of Damaturu Tuesday evening, said Yobe state p...

4 dead, 130 rescued from capsizing off Aussie isleCANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Four people are believed to have died and 130 others were rescued after a crowded boat carrying asylum seekers to Australia capsized and sank Wednesday, less than a week after more than 90 people drowned on a similar journey. The incident, which occurred midway between Australia’s Christmas Island and the main Indonesian island of Java, has renewed Australian government efforts to deter a growing stream of boat arriv...

Clinton cites concerns over human rights in RussiaHELSINKI (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says she’s optimistic that relations with Moscow will not suffer despite planned legislation in Congress that would impose tough sanctions on Russian human rights violators. Clinton says she expects “something to move” on both the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik law and on Congress’ concerns about Russian human rights. She told reporters in Finland on Wednesday that the concerns could ...

43 Ethiopians, Somalis suffocate in truck smuggleARUSHA, Tanzania (AP) — Forty-three Ethiopians and Somalis who paid to be smuggled from their homelands in search of better living conditions died in the back of a crowded, suffocating truck, an official said Wednesday. Deputy Home Affairs Minister Pereira Silima on Wednesday said it was sad that so many people died from the illegal smuggling scheme. Tanzania’s state television said the dead bodies were thrown off the truck and dumped in the b...

Turkey threatens action after Syria downs jetANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Syria said Saturday it shot down a Turkish reconnaissance plane because the plane entered its airspace, insisting it was “not an attack” as both sides desperately tried to de-escalate the episode before it exploded into a regional conflagration. Turkey threatened to retaliate but did not say what action it would take as it searched for the aircraft’s two missing pilots. The downed plane heightened tensions between two cou...

Hamas threatens to escalate attacks on IsraelJERUSALEM (AP) — Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers threatened to escalate fighting with Israel on Saturday after airstrikes killed several gunmen in the coastal territory, and Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel wounded one person and damaged an elementary school in the country’s south. The two sides periodically clash, but this flare-up was the most serious in months. It started with an attack by a little known al-Qaida-inspired Palestinian milit...

In North Korea, learning to hate US starts earlyPYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — A framed poster on the wall of a kindergarten classroom shows bright-eyed children brandishing rifles and bayonets as they attack a hapless American soldier, his face bandaged and blood spurting from his mouth. “We love playing military games knocking down the American bastards,” reads the slogan printed across the top. Another poster depicts an American with a noose around his neck. “Let’s wipe out the U.S. imper...

Egypt to announce election results SundayCAIRO (AP) — Egypt will release results from disputed presidential elections Sunday, the country’s top elections commission official said — an announcement that will put an end to nerve-wracking uncertainty about who is the official winner, but promises no resolution to the power struggles between Islamists, the military and other factions. A gathering of secular-leaning politicians criticized on Saturday what they said was U.S. meddling on be...

Palestinians push Nativity church as Heritage sitePARIS (AP) — The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is becoming the church of contention, with a bid by the Palestinians to use their position as the newest members of the U.N.’s cultural arm to obtain World Heritage status for the iconic Christian site — and perhaps boost their own campaign for legitimacy. The effort by the Palestinian Authority, like its overall efforts for global recognition for an independent Palestinian state, is drawing...

Huge US, SKorea war games called warning to NKoreaPOCHEON, South Korea (AP) — A huge North Korean flag disappeared behind a tower of flames and thick black smoke Friday as South Korean fighter jets and U.S. attack helicopters fired rockets in the allies’ biggest joint live-fire drills since the Korean War. The war games south of the heavily armed Korean border come amid rising animosity between the rival Koreas and are meant to mark Monday’s 62nd anniversary of the start of the 1950-53 war, w...

Paraguay leader tries to quell diplomatic falloutASUNCION, Paraguay (AP) — Paraguay’s newly sworn-in president set about forming a new government Saturday as he promised to honor foreign commitments, respect private property and reach out to Latin American leaders to minimize diplomatic fallout and keep his country from becoming a regional pariah. In a brief appearance before international journalists, Federico Franco tried to broadcast a sense of normality a day after lawmakers overwhelming...

Fading political left still thrives in Mexico CityMEXICO CITY (AP) — When it comes to the presidency, Mexico’s voters are fed up and ready to throw the ruling the party out. But in the nation’s capital, the progressive island known as Mexico City, they’re about to hand the leftist political party that has ruled since 1997 an election-day valentine. Boyish mayoral candidate Miguel Angel Mancera of the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, holds an astonishing lead of about 50 points in polls go...